The Macintosh and Windows are the most popular computer platforms on earth. But the relationship between them, and the people who use them, has never been smooth. For years, Macintosh fans felt robbed by Microsoft, who, they felt, stole the best features of the Macintosh when designing Windows. And Windows users, for their part, often resented what they perceived as the excessive enthusiasm Macintosh fans felt for their underdog platform.
Today, much of the anger has subsided. Microsoft, it turns out, is enthusiastic in its support of the Mac OS, happy to support its sole competitor (if only to show the U.S. Justice Department that Microsoft is no monopoly). The Macintosh, moreover, benefits greatly by Microsoft’s Macintosh software division, whose Office suite and Internet tools rank among the most popular Macintosh applications. Meanwhile, Apple has helped itself to some of the best ideas from Windows in the latest versions of the Mac OS, bringing the two systems even closer together.
As a result, we now live in an era of unprecedented shifts from one operating system to another. During Apple’s financial slump of 1995 to 1997, thousands of Macintosh fans reluctantly started using Windows out of fear that their favorite computer maker might not be around to support the Macintosh for long. Then, during Apple’s subsequent recovery, thousands of frustrated Windows users embraced the simplicity and style of Apple’s smash-hit iMacintosh computer. It’s increasingly common for someone to use a Macintosh at home, but Windows at work; Windows in Accounting, but a Macintosh in the art department; Macs for the kids, Windows for their parents. And among computing professionals—network administrators, consultants, and web page designers—familiarity with both platforms is becoming ever more important.
With all the emotion clearing like smoke, one fact becomes clear: whether at Apple or Microsoft, the designers of an operating system must solve the same set of challenges. They need to offer you, the user, a means of interacting with your files and folders; access to preference settings to tailor the operating system to your purposes; a system of printing and going online; and so on. Sometimes Apple and Microsoft solved these puzzles in similar fashions, other times they took drastically different approaches, but the problems themselves are the same. Once you study both platforms, the parallels become crystal clear: a Windows shortcut is essentially identical to a Macintosh alias; the Windows Recycle Bin matches the Mac’s Trash can; the Windows Network Neighborhood and the Mac’s Network Browser both access other computers on your network; and so on.
But knowing one set of terminology isn’t much help in figuring out the other. Who would guess that a shortcut and an alias have the same function? And more important, when you’re plopped in front of the platform you don’t know, how can you figure out the important differences between shortcuts and aliases, for instance?
This book is the answer. It’s designed like a foreign-language translation dictionary. For instance, if you’re a Windows user trying to use a Macintosh and you want to create an shortcut, you look up shortcut to find out it’s an alias on the Macintosh. Like a French-English/English-French phrasebook, this one is split in half; one set of alphabetical entries is written for the person who’s switching to Windows, and this set is written for people going to Macintosh.
Crossing Platforms assumes that you already know your native computer; it makes no attempt to start from such basics as pointing, clicking, or how RAM and hard disks work. Its mission is to make you operational on the less familiar platform as efficiently as possible, to help minimize your groping for important controls in an unfamiliar vehicle.
The key to using this book is simple: Turn to the appropriate half of the book—“For Windows Users Learning Macintosh” or “For Macintosh Users Learning Windows.” Then look up the term you already know.
If you’re a Windows user, you’re reading the correct half of the book. Look up such Windows-specific terms as Alt key, Network Neighborhood, and Recycle Bin, or generic computing terms like file sharing, moving files, and printing files. Either way, you’ll find out exactly what the equivalent component is on the Macintosh, and you can read about how it differs from the one you already know. Words in boldface are cross-references—other related terms in this same half of the book that you can look up.
As you become increasingly familiar with the Mac OS, you’ll likely recognize more and more familiar landmarks. Eventually, you’ll grasp the stylistic differences of the world’s two most famous system software companies, and maybe you’ll even anticipate where Apple stashed things. At that point, you won’t need this book as often, and you’ll have attained a most impressive status—as a truly bilingual computer user. When that time comes, you won’t even bat an eye when taking what was once an inconceivable leap: crossing platforms.
Both Apple and Microsoft update their operating systems constantly. This book covers the most widely used versions of each: Windows 95 and 98, and Mac OS 8.0 through 8.6. The book doesn’t explicitly cover Mac OS 9, but almost all of this book’s Macintosh discussions should apply equally well to the newer Mac OS.
This entire book is dedicated to documenting the differences between Windows and the Mac OS. But if today is your first day in front of a Macintosh, here are the ten difference most likely to trip you up:
Turning the machine on and off. Every modern Macintosh—laptop or desktop—has a power key on the keyboard. It’s marked by a triangle or, on recent models, by a circle with a vertical line in the middle. Push this button to turn the Macintosh on; push it again to summon the “Are you sure you want to shut down?” dialog box.
Mouse buttons. The Macintosh mouse’s single button corresponds to the left mouse button on a Windows PC. To summon pop-up contextual menus—the right mouse button’s traditional job—you Control-click something on the Macintosh.
Menu bars. On the Macintosh, a single menu bar appears at the top of the screen at all times. The commands in it change as you switch from one application to another. You won’t find a separate menu bar inside every window, as you do in Windows.
Keyboard shortcuts. Most keyboard shortcuts are the same on the Macintosh as in Windows—except that you should substitute the Command key (which has clover leaf and Apple logos on it) for the Ctrl key, and the Option key for the Alt key.
Window controls. To close a window, click the tiny square in the upper-left corner of a Macintosh window. To move a window, drag the title bar as usual. And to resize it, drag the lower-right corner, exactly as you would in Windows. (Dragging the fat edges of a window moves the window instead of resizing it, as it would in Windows.) The two squares in the upper-right corner of the Macintosh window are the zoom box (makes the window exactly large enough to reveal all of its contents) and the collapse box (makes the window vanish into its title bar).
The Application menu. The Macintosh has no Taskbar. Instead, you switch from one application to another using the Application menu, which appears at the far right of the menu bar and is marked by the icon of the current application. If you’re running Mac OS 8.5 or later, this menu may also display the name of the current running application; you can switch from one application to another by pressing Command-Tab.
Application windows. Quitting a Macintosh application (by choosing Quit, the Macintosh equivalent of Exit) closes all of its windows. No stray windows remain on the screen, as they sometimes do in Windows. Also, closing the last window in an application generally won’t quit the application, as happens with some Windows programs.
The Apple menu. The Apple menu, whose icon appears at the top-left corner of the screen, resembles the Start menu in many ways. You should know about a few important differences, however: first, only the most recently used applications appear in the Recent Applications submenu; the Macintosh offers no complete list of every application on the hard disk. Second, adding new documents, applications, disks, or even networked servers to the Apple menu is extremely easy. See Start Menu in this half of the book for step-by-step instructions.
Disks. The Macintosh has no My Computer icon. The hard disk icon always appears at the upper-right corner of the screen; icons for other kinds of disks—floppies, CDs, or Zip disks, for example—don’t appear on the Desktop until you insert such a disk into the machine. Ejecting a disk is also very different on the Macintosh: there’s no manual-eject button on the front panel for most kinds of disk drives. Instead, eject a disk by highlighting its icon and then choosing Special → Eject Disk. Or use the time-honored Macintosh shortcut: drag the disk’s icon onto the Trash can (the equivalent of the Recycle Bin). Doing so does not erase the disk! Instead, the disk pops out of the drive.
Emptying the Trash. The Mac OS never removes files from the Trash automatically, as Windows does with files in the Recycle Bin. To remove files from the Trash manually, choose Special → Empty Trash.
Bonus Difference: Troubleshooting. Troubleshooting on the Macintosh is generally a do-it-yourself affair—partly because Apple’s free technical support period is only 90 days long, and partly because most Macintosh problems are easy to fix. For example, every Macintosh comes with a startup CD that can be used to boot, run, and troubleshoot the computer, even when the hard disk is damaged or missing. See Troubleshooting in this half of the book for some starting points.